Michael Hill, senior investment director Aramco Ventures, is one of our top 50 Emerging Leaders in corporate venturing for 2026.
Michael Hill is an experienced investor, an expert negotiator in new deals and a highly active board member, say his teammates at Aramco Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of the Saudi Arabian oil and gas company.
Hill joined the corporate venturing team in 2014. Before joining Aramco Ventures, he was a partner at Energy Capital Management, a private equity investor in oil and gas technologies. He also spent four years at HitecVision, a Norwegian private equity firm, where he was a senior partner.
Hill mainly works on investing in new deals and portfolio management at Aramco Ventures, one of the world’s largest corporate venturing units, with $7bn in assets under management across multiple funds. These investment vehicles include a sustainability fund, a digital and industrialisation fund and the Prosperity7 Fund, which invests in technologies outside of the energy industry to provide diversification opportunities for the state-backed Aramco parent company.
“Hill has added value to the team by making sure the right systems and processes are in place at the investment unit. This is often behind the scenes work that is critical to the team operating efficiently”
Wa’ed Ventures, a $500m fund investing in Saudi Arabian tech-based startups, is also backed by Aramco.
Hill’s colleagues say he has added value to the team by making sure the right systems and processes are in place at the investment unit. This is often behind-the-scenes work that is critical to the team operating efficiently.
Hills sits on nine boards of startups as a non-executive director. These investee companies include Inductosense, a UK designer and manufacturer of ultrasonic sensor technologies for erosion monitoring; Grandperspective, a German developer of remote sensing systems for hazardous gas systems; and Well-Sense Technology, a UK provider of oil well data.
Hill is part of the Aramco Ventures team in London. The unit, founded in 2012, is headquartered in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The team has around 40 people and has invested in more than 100 companies that run the spectrum of pre-seed to late stage.
The Emerging Leaders are mid-career corporate venture professionals who are making an outstanding contribution to their teams and the industry.
See the full list of Emerging Leaders here.
